App #12: Flipboard for iPad and iPhone

You’ve probably already heard of Flipboard, one of the most popular free apps for iPad, and more recently for iPhone. But just in case you haven’t, this is quite an amazing app that will both keep you entertained and give you many teaching ideas.

Flipboard (iTunes link, free), is a news curator that can be completely personalized for you. The app developers call it a “Social Magazine”. If you have multiple devices, your settings are synced effortlessly between them. Flipboard has a strong integration with Twitter, and, more recently, Google+. It is a much more enjoyable experience to view your Twitter timeline, as photos from all the links shared appear directly on your screen, as opposed to having to click them on your usual Twitter clients.

If you are not a Twitter user, don’t worry. You are still able to search for anything that interests you: Photography, Sports, Travel, etc. Anything you wish to look up will show up on Flipboard. There are suggested sections such as News, Tech, and Flipboard Picks. You can search for your favorite blogger, and all their posts will appear in a beautiful magazine-like display. You can integrate your Instagram feed, Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube and Google+, amongst many others.

First up, here is a short video for Flipboard for iPhone. You will notice that it is quite fast in the page switches. New stories will replace older ones by “falling” on top of them.

Now, the iPad version:

Users are able to save interesting articles that they notice in the following ways:

Email the links to themselves or to friends;

Favorite the tweet onto their Twitter favorites (do this by simply tapping the star);

Actually tweet out the article to their followers. This would be a very common task if they see something that they really like;

Save it for offline reading on apps such as Instapaper or Pocket (Formerly Read it Later);

Here are some educational uses for Flipboard, both for research and in the classroom:

Find and curate your list of educational blogs; have them all on one page for easy access. You can set this up directly within Flipboard, or within your Google Reader;

Get your students to create their own Flipboard categories for their interests pertaining to any school-related subject;

Create a class Twitter account and have all your students add that as one of their Flipboard selections;

Subscribe to newspapers that are not normally available in your area. Flipboard has full access to articles from The Globe and Mail. Also, the New York Times has recently given their subscribers full access to all their articles on Flipboard;

Continually look for new and better boards to add! Suggest them in the comments.

Although it is a free app, there are absolutely no advertisements. Stay up to date with essentially everything you are interested in. Once you download it, you will find Flipboard incredibly fun to read and easy to use. give it a try if you haven’t already!